I sometimes fear that Nietzsche's old "eternal recurrence" is true -- that we are bound to an endlessly repeating cycle of historical events which will repeat into infinity and that we'd better be happy with all of our choices because we're bound to go through them again and again. Then I look at recent history and notice that in the very least, it's not a short cycle.

What happened to my parents vs. what's happened to me? They lost a Kennedy who was President of the United States and the darling of the nation to an assassin (or to a conspiracy?) We lost a Kennedy to a plane crash during a trip to posh Martha's Vineyard and he was the editor of George magazine (which no one reads) and only after his apparent death are we told that John John was as to a Prince in American life. History repeats itself, but to a lesser extent.

My parents watched a President almost impeached for hiring thugs to break into Democratic Party Headquarters and for being backed by an organization which had the nerve to call itself CREEP (the Committee to Re-Elect the President.) We saw a President impeached for engaging in oral sex and becoming the topic of giddy gossip amongst a White House intern and female Pentagon worker (where he was called "the big creep, eerie huh?) Their President quit before he was impeached, our President weathered the Impeachment and is laughing about it now.

They had Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X -- both were wonderful statesmen who changed the course of history and were killed for it. We've got Jesse Jackson, still going strong, and last used his oratory skills to get the U.S. P.O.W.'s released from Serbia.

They put a man on the moon. We never went back to the moon, but we've put a lot of men in orbit. I get the feeling that NASA just plain used to be better years ago.

They had Viet Nam and we've had Iraq, the Balkans, Grenada and Panama. Hey, it's not all bad when things calm down -- I'm pretty glad we're not embroiled in a Southeast Asian land war.

But all the New Age talk says that we're in a Quickening -- that history is moving ever faster and that we're headed for some sort of millennial collapse which will result from a textured mingling of technology, global politics and Biblical prophecy. But I beg to differ. I think that as the issues facing the world have grown more complicated we are growing more thoughtful, and thoughtful people tend not to act so rashly.

The human rights which MLK Jr. and Malcolm X fought and died for are now recognized as basic by the United Nations. In the United States the revolution towards equality regardless of race, gender, sexual and religious orientations has made a whole lot of progress and even if we must admit, as we always must admit, that things aren't perfect they are at least to the point where problems can be solved by debate rather than rioting.

What happened in Viet Nam has caused our government to be at least more careful about sending our ground troops around the world. Unfortunately, they've decided to do it only when they're sure of an easy win (I think the message the young were trying to send during Viet Nam was that they shouldn't be getting us into wars at all) but at least, in the very least, the government has to ask itself: "will our people put up with this?" before they start shooting.

And yes, the second half of this century has been more peaceful, and I no longer think that a Third World War will ever happen.

And yes, a lot is going to have to change in the next century so that life around the year 2000 will look to people in the year 3000 like the turn of our century Victorians look to us now.

Michael Maiello doesn't have any millennial anxiety.